The Crick Crack Club at Cranborne Earthouse | Fairytales for Grown-ups: The Three Snake Leaves

The Crick Crack Club at Cranborne Earthouse | Fairytales for Grown-ups: The Three Snake Leaves

There is a hill in Dorset that has a door. Inside is a fire-lit theatre. This is Cranborne Earthouse – one of England’s most magical, secret venues. Seating up to 250 people and lit by oil lamp and firelight, this is a place where audiences gather – under an earth roof, held up by 21 huge oak tree trunks – to listen to stories and music.

Every month, world-class storytellers, The Crick Crack Club, bring legendary live performance storytelling to the Earthouse.

Fairytales for Grown-ups: The Three Snake Leaves by Hugh Lupton, Sally Pomme Clayton and Ben Haggarty, with music by Sheema Mukherjee

The forest is a place where marvels gleam in the shadows and the mysterious snake leaves bring transformation.

Over 200 years after the Grimm Brothers’ magnificent collection of stories was first published, three pioneers of contemporary performance storytelling reform to bring their seminal piece, The Three Snake Leaves, to the stage once more, with new music by Sheema Mukherjee.

Seamlessly stitching together lesser-known stories from the Grimm Collection, Hugh Lupton, Ben Haggarty and Sally Pomme Clayton journey deep into a half-remembered realm of grown-up fairytale and myth. Dark, beguiling, and comedic by turn, this is an enchanted search for contemporary wisdom and a joyous exploration of the complex nature of humanity.

Come into the fairytale forest, and be prepared to stray from the path.

‘A WONDERFUL, INTRICATE PIECE ABOUT STORYTELLING AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF REDEMPTION!’ – The Independent

TICKETS: £13
SUITABLE FOR: adults (14+)
RUNNING TIME: 120 mins (+ interval)
STARTS: 7.30pm (We open the site at 6pm for evening shows. If it’s sunny, please feel free to bring a picnic to eat in the grounds of the Earthouse)

CONTENT WARNING: This performance may contain descriptions of or references to death, incest, rape, death in childbirth, and mutilation contextualised within a paradigm of mythic narrative, archetype and metaphor.